2. psake

psake is a domain-specific language and build automation tool written in PowerShell to create builds using a dependency pattern similar to Rake or MSBuild. It dramatically simplifies the build language as compared to MSBuild scripting. A build script consists of Tasks. Each Task is a function that can define dependencies on other Task functions (see below).

The following post details the steps I went through to create a VmWare “estate” using PowerCLI & WinRM

What is PowerCLI?

VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a command-line interface (CLI) tool for automating vSphere and vCloud management. VMware vSphere PowerCLI debuted as the VMware Infrastructure Toolkit, also called the VI Toolkit.

What is WinRM?

WinRM is short for Windows Remote Management. It is Microsoft’s new remote management standard which allows administrators to remotely manage and remotely execute programs on windows machines. Prior to this Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) had to be used for everything by collecting data from the COM and DCOM services. A popular remote management tool that used these RPC calls was the PSTools package by Sysinternals